Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

Jerry Nolte & Tony Jilek are veteran F2F volunteers who have worked in Nicaragua for the past few decades, building upon the work and relationships they have developed in the country.  Both are retired University of Wisconsin-River Falls (UWRF) Agriculture professors. Jilek taught at UWRF in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Science (CAFES) for 26 years and Nolte taught for 30. In addition to their continuous support to the Farmer to Farmer program, both Jilek and Nolte are active members of the Partners of the Americas' Wisconsin/ Nicaragua Chapter. Yesterday, December 18th,  the River Falls Journal in Wisconsin wrote an article about their Farmer to Farmer trips and work with Nicaragua/Wisconsin Chapter.  Please check it out: http://www.riverfallsjournal.com/event/article/id/103746/ Nolte & Jilek in the field during their 2011 FTF trip

US and Haitian farmers creating a garden with donated seeds This week in Haiti, Farmer to Farmer volunteers and field staff are busy working together with a group of women in Lory to plant gardens, improve their seedling nursery, and advance their chicken production and processing. Lory is a small town in the North of Haiti, about 10 km from Cap Haitian. The women in this community have made the most of the training they have received - beginning with small gardening and later moving on to rabbit production and now chicken production. They have expressed the desire to beautify their town and even explore future options for agri-tourism. Traditionally, Lory is known for the pottery that they hand-craft with the clay from their area. The group in Lory recently received a follow-up visit by Master Gardener Tom Syverud from Wisconsin, focusing on organic production. Continuing with the momentum of this visit, currently in country are three farmers from Vermont - John Hayden, David...

Meghan, Kelvin and Chrissy on their way to visit hydroponic producers in Essequibo. From October 7 - 15, 2012, the F2F field team in Guyana was privileged to be able to host our colleagues from F2F Headquarters (HQ) in Washington, DC. The visitors were Mrs. Meghan Olivier, Deputy Director of the F2F Program and Ms. Chrissy McCurdy, our Program Officer. For a long time, Chrissy had been affiliated with F2F activities in Guyana via e-mails, photographs and second-hand information from her teammates and volunteers, but this was going to be her first visit to the “Land of Many Waters”. Guyana Field Staff wanted to ensure that the visit was both meaningful in terms of HQ staff exposure to as wide a range of activities as possible and, at the same time, experiential in terms of exposure to various local cuisine and sight-seeing. Meghan presenting a hydroponic production sign to producer, Verna D'Aguiar. Because the F2F program has had activities in 6 of Guyana’s 10 admin...

Distributing seeds. In October, Farmer to Farmer veteran Ira Richards returned from Nicaragua after having successfully carried out a promotional campaign for the use of Mucuna pruriens , better known as the velvet bean. The plant, infamous for its itchiness, is widely used across the world as a forage, fallow and green manure crop, as it fixes nitrogen and fertilizes soil. Mr. Richards followed up with farmers producing the velvet bean as a nutrient supplement for their cattle and soils, providing technical assistance to further optimize the use of the beans in hopes that increased production and usage will result in better cattle nutrition, increased milk production, and more sustainable agriculture in general. Velvet bean vines climbing a tree Working with the dairy cooperative San Felipe de Boaco, Mr. Richards distributed 20 pounds of velvet bean seed for demonstration trials and seed multiplication for each of the 26 farmers who participated in a planned field day at the...